Mals Musings: And now for marketings greatest trick
Branding, marketing's most overrated trick, lacks authenticity and turns customers off. However, customers are very interested in something else we can delivervalue.
Logos, imagery and taglines are these magicians or the custodians of customers? No wonder nobody trusts us anymore. We are heavily into style, imagery and perception and have forgotten about customers and value. The hype surrounding branding is over the topand destined for the bottom.
As an articulate colleague of mine puts it, We put too much effort into the color and external appearance of the building but way too little into what the building is and what it does. Branding has lost its meaning, role and impact and is regarded as a cross between a gimmick and a manipulation tool. Are we missing a trick?
Brands matter! At least, thats what marketers tell us. But how do our army of customers view branding? Branding has lost its meaning and impact with our customers, and their perspective on branding is costing us.
One point we forget is that branding is intertwined with trust. So where there is no trust, all efforts to brand are wasted, since the customers doubt everything we say. First, we must regain trust. A brand is a collection of perceptions in the mind of the customer. And, as a slave-philosopher famously said, perception is reality because people believe it.
We canand mustinfluence perceptions. Otherwise, we leave it to our competitors or to chance. A brand is the promise of an experience and an ongoing relationship between supplier and customer, made up of tangible and intangible values that provide security of demand and therefore security of earnings to the brand owner. Branding is the combined outputs of what you do and what you say. Both are equally important! We currently have a disproportionate distribution of effort between what we say and what we deliver.
Beneath all the hype, fads and buzzwords, there are some fundamental truths in pharmaceutical marketing. Results are dependent upon differentiation, and product-led differentiation is becoming harder, costlier and shorter-lived. As R&D excellence on its own cannot be expected to be the sole differentiator, marketers and the sales force have to step up to the plate and create differentiation through branding and other parts of the value proposition.
It is paramount that we appreciate a brand has two parts: One is what we deliver and the other is what we promise. Too much of our understanding of branding has its roots in the communication part. Trying to out-communicate without any distinct value is a waste of time. Nonetheless, we should not underestimate the impact of effective communications when we get it right.
This short story below illustrates the role effective communication can play.
A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign that read: "I am blind, please help." There were only a few coins in the hat.
A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.
Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?"
The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way."
What he had written was: "Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it."
In the end, our efforts on branding need to be more about doing and less about telling.